This week, I have been mostly reading:

• The Little Black Box That Took Over Piracy — Brian Barrett, WIRED: Kodi itself is just a media player; the majority of addons aren't piracy focused, and lots of Kodi devices without illicit software plug-ins are utterly uncontroversial. Still, that Kodi has swallowed piracy may not surprise some of you; a full six percent of North American households have a Kodi device configured to access unlicensed content, according to a recent Sandvine study. But the story of how a popular, open-source media player called XBMC became a pirate's paradise might. And with a legal crackdown looming, the Kodi ecosystem's present may matter less than its uncertain future.
• Freedom for the Many — Shant Mesrobian in Jacobin: After salary or wages, the most significant part of the [US] employment contract tends to be health insurance. And employers know it. The resulting dependency and vulnerability is especially acute when a worker’s entire family relies on them for health coverage (particularly if one of their family members has a chronic or life-threatening disease). In such cases, health insurance surpasses even monetary compensation as the primary motivation for maintaining employment. When your child has cancer, it’s that much harder to speak up about your boss’s sexual harassment. […] Lack of health insurance (and college debt, and middling disability benefits — the list goes on) severely limits a person’s ability to choose which career to pursue, where to live, when to start a family, how many children to have, and what types of hobbies to take up. In short, it’s not about free stuff — it’s about a free life.
• The Angriest Librarian Is Full of Hope — Alex Halpern in CityLab: Those mousy, quiet librarians are a thing of the past, if in fact they ever existed at all outside of Hollywood. Today, depending on the community they serve, a public librarian is part educator, part social worker, and part Human Google. What they aren’t is a living anachronism, an out-of-touch holdout in a dying job who’s consigned to a desk, scolding kids for returning books a few days late.
• Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism — Kate Raworth in the Conversation: ‘Buy land – they aren’t making it any more,’ quipped Mark Twain. It’s a maxim that would certainly serve you well in a game of Monopoly, the bestselling board game that has taught generations of children to buy up property, stack it with hotels, and charge fellow players sky-high rents for the privilege of accidentally landing there. The game’s little-known inventor, Elizabeth Magie, would no doubt have made herself go directly to jail if she’d lived to know just how influential today’s twisted version of her game has turned out to be. Why? Because it encourages its players to celebrate exactly the opposite values to those she intended to champion.
• Physics Confession — xkcd:
  
• Willmot now last Sydney suburb with a median house price under $500,000 — Nicole Frost at Fairfax's dog-wagging tail Domain (via MacroBusiness): There are just 632 houses located in the suburb, which was established in the early 1970s and named for the first president of the Blacktown Shire Council, Thomas Willmot. The majority of the suburb’s homes are owned by investors. It has been this feverish investor activity that has led to the disappearance of Sydney’s sub-$500,000 suburbs. At the start of the year there were four and five years ago there were more than 150.
• The wilderness years: how Labour’s left survived to conquer — Andy Beckett, the Guardian: In the vast literature written about Labour between the 1980s and 2015 – all the fat gossipy memoirs, diaries and biographies, confident overviews by journalists and historians, and careful analyses by political scientists – there is an absence, which has seemed ever larger and more puzzling since Corbyn was overwhelmingly elected leader. He and his closest comrades for decades – John McDonnell, now shadow chancellor, and Diane Abbott, now shadow home secretary – rarely feature. They are not in books about the 2003 Iraq war, which they all opposed. They are hardly in books about New Labour; or about the Conservative government and its austerity policies, which they opposed when their party barely did. They do not even feature much in studies of Labour’s startling success in London, where they all have constituencies and have hugely increased their majorities since the 90s.

This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Modern Economists: The Inept Firefighters’ Club — Dean Baker in Democracy Journal: The problem is not that modern economics lacks the tools needed to understand the economy. Just as with firefighting, the basics have been well known for a long time. The problem is with the behavior and the incentive structure of the practitioners. There is overwhelming pressure to produce work that supports the status quo (i.e. redistributing to the rich), that doesn’t question authority, and that is needlessly complex. The result is a discipline in which much of the work is of little use, except to legitimate the existing power structure.
• ANZ: Australia “place of choice” for property money laundering — Leith van Onselen at MacroBusiness: Legislation to implement the second tranche of anti-money laundering (AML) legislation covering real estate gate keepers has been gathering dust for a decade. The end result is that realtors, lawyers, accountants and other real estate gate keepers are currently exempted from AML requirements. And this exemption has provided an easy avenue for foreign buyers to launder funds through Australian property.
• I have run out of interesting things to write about edtech — Jonathan Rees: What I’ve learned in my years of studying this topic, is that there are actually a ton of really devoted people who are trying to develop and utilize various educational technologies to create useful and – at least in some cases – superior experiences to how colleges and classes operate now. These efforts are, as you might expect, hugely labor intensive. Therefore, they seldom appeal to private Silicon Valley companies trying to make a quick buck. They do, however, appeal to all of us who are in higher education for the long run and a willing to try something new.
• Universities' greed and phony prestige to blame for appalling drop-out rates — Tracie Winch in the Sydney Morning Herald: In terms of classroom engagement, it's fair to say that the centuries-old method of formal lectures and tutorials is outdated, but simply shunting classes online is not the answer and, of itself, it certainly isn't innovative. It's sending a message to students saying "hey you don't really need to show up" and so the majority don't – unless there is some kind of assessment hurdle attached. And we are shocked?
• America’s hidden philosophy — John McCumber in Aeon: As far as rational choice theory is concerned, it doesn’t matter if I want to end world hunger, pass the bar, or buy myself a nice private jet; I make my choices the same way. Similarly for Cold War philosophy – but it also has an ethical imperative that concerns not ends but means. However laudable or nefarious my goals might be, I will be better able to achieve them if I have two things: wealth and power. We therefore derive an ‘ethical’ imperative: whatever else you want to do, increase your wealth and power! Results of this are easily seen in today’s universities. Academic units that enable individuals to become wealthy and powerful (business schools, law schools) or stay that way (medical schools) are extravagantly funded; units that do not (humanities departments) are on tight rations.
• Why Race Is Not a Thing, According to Genetics — Simon Worrall interviews geneticist Adam Rutherford for National Geographic: It says something about us that we look for simple answers to complex questions. Inevitably, people have turned to the relatively new science of genetics to try to explain otherwise unfathomable human behaviors, such as spree killing or murder. […] If we sequenced [mass-shooter] Adam Lanza’s genome, we would simply find that he has a human genome and that all the variants in him would be found in other people that don’t commit spree killings. Turning to genetics to try and find out why this guy killed all of those kids in this wicked act completely misses the point! The single common factor in all spree killings is access to guns. That seems straightforward to me.

This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Australia's unreported poverty line — Gerry Georgatos in Independent Australia: If we can begin to be honest about the markers of poverty, unemployment, homelessness, in the least we would have to immediately double the numbers of the poor, unemployed and homeless. By this measure, there are at least six million Australians living in poverty and the proportion in poverty will continue to increase long into the foreseeable future. There are closer to two million Australian children living in poverty rather than the 740,000 children that we are officially told, or allowed to believe, are living in poverty.
• Universities hoover-up the great unwashed — Leith van Onselen, MacroBusiness: In addition to the lowering of university entrance scores, further evidence that Australia’s universities have turned into quantity-based ‘degree factories’ is also provided in the most recent Department of Employment skills shortages report, which showed there were a record 1 million domestic students enrolled with a higher education provider, 730,000 of which were enrolled in bachelor degrees – an extraordinary amount of higher education students in an economy of 24.5 million.
• FIRE sector vampire continues to bleed economy dry — Leith van Onselen, MacroBusiness:
  
• The Skills Gap that Always Explains Unemployment — Dean Baker: There is a substantial segment of elite types who are always happy to hear about the skills shortage as an explanation for unemployment. See, the problem is not the state of the economy and its poor management by economists, the problem is always the ill-trained workers. You don't need evidence for this one, just assert that the problem is workers don't have the right skills and furrow your brow in a concerned manner. Works every time.
• If Africa is rich – why is it so poor? — Bill Mitchell: Essentially, Gunder Frank argued that it is essential to understand the relationship between the “metropolis and its economic colonies” under capitalism. The underdeveloped countries were in that state because they were functionally essential to making the developed nations at the core richer. This was a very conception of the process of economic development that organisations such as the IMF and the World Bank hold out as they impose neo-liberal policy structures onto the underdeveloped world. What Gunder Frank argued was that these policy structures were not about developing the undeveloped nations but, rather, developing the richer nations further and holding the underdeveloped nations in a state where they could act as resource conduits for the richer nations.
• The U.S. Is Shocked Shocked Shocked! That Russia May Have Meddled With Our Election — Ted Rall:
  
• Behind the Media Surge Against Bernie Sanders — Norman Solomon: A few days earlier, the newspaper had front-paged another “news” story hostile to grassroots political forces aligned with Bernie -- a de facto editorial masquerading as news coverage, headlined: “Democrats in Split-Screen: The Base Wants It All. The Party Wants to Win.” In a bizarre disconnect from electoral reality, the article portrayed a party establishment that had lost election after election, including a cataclysmic loss to Trump, as being about winning. And the article portrayed the party’s activist base as interfering with the establishment’s winning ways.
• Theresa May can nail Brexit, she just needs to make sure everyone continues feeling sorry for her — Mark Steel in the Independent: I think I’ve worked out what’s happening here. It’s a mass psychological test – we’re all being monitored to see at what point we feel sorry for Theresa May. By November, she’ll be at a G8 summit crawling round the floor looking for her contact lens and get tangled in the Japanese Prime Minister’s wife’s kimono, which she’s allergic to so she turns purple, but the blotches on her neck will spell “I’m shit at Brexit” then she’ll get trodden on by a stray llama, and let out a series of growls that accidentally sound like “You can have Scotland for a fiver” in German to Angela Merkel.
• Kensington & Chelsea’s reserves prove people don’t want government to run surpluses — Richard Murphy: As a matter of fact local authorities need reserves. They are solely dependent upon revenues they can raise from local taxes, central government and the supply of services. They can borrow, but only with difficulty in most cases. And the reality is that they face unpredictable demand for their services and central government has a poor record of responding to their needs in times of crisis. So, they have reserves. These are, literally, a contingency fund for the unforeseen. Kensington and Chelsea has made this fact visible and it seems that people do not like it. What they resent is that they have paid tax without a purpose.
• "Bribing voters" and all that: neoliberal contempt for democracy? — John Weeks in the Prime Economics blog: Social provision rather than commercialization through markets is the underlying political economy of social democracy. Social democrats restrict markets; neoliberals enhance them. The social democratic commitment to universal provision directly contradicts the neoliberal vision of a market dominated economy. Over the last decade neoliberals have responded to the social democratic principle of universal provision by labelling it populism of the left. […] means testing by definition divides households into the “haves” and the “have-nots”; indeed, it reinforces and institutionalizes that division. This division fosters the shirker/striver and undeserving/deserving ideology of neoliberalism. Universal provision unites society rather than dividing it.
• Australia’s housing bubble obliterates all records — Leith van Onselen
  
• Exclusive: Steve Keen on the secret source of eternal Australian growth — in MacroBusiness: Australia avoided a recession in 2008 only by adding additional leverage to its already over-indebted household sector, and the only ways that Australia can keep its winning streak on GDP growth going (given that its government is obsessed with trying to run a surplus) is to either to achieve a huge trade surplus, or for the household sector to continue piling on debt faster than GDP itself grows. […] It may continue to [keep credit demand high] for a while, particularly if encouraged by government policies like a renewed First Home Vendors Grant, further interest rate cuts by the RBA, or some policy doozie like letting suckers—sorry, I meant first home buyers—use their superannuation for a house purchase. But it will reach a plateau, and before it does, credit-based demand will at best fall to zero. Far more likely is that it will turn negative, as it has done in every other country that has experienced a recession caused by falling credit, with both the business sector and the household sector deleveraging.
• There is a true oppositional Left forming and gaining political traction — Bill Mitchell: [The British and French parliamentary elections], particularly the British outcome confirms what we have been noticing for a few years now – there is finally what we might call a true oppositional Left forming and gaining political traction in these nations. This is a Left platform that concedes little to the neo-liberals. It is vilified by the conservatives and the so-called progressive commentariat (such as the Guardian writers) and politicians (New Labour in Britain) as being in “cloud cuckoo land” and predictions from all of sundry of electoral wipeouts have been daily. But the results demonstrated that the message (such as in the Labour Manifesto) resonates with millions of people (40 per cent of those who voted in Britain). It is now a mainstream Left message that has taken over the British Labour Party and the Blairites are hiding under rocks. There is hope. People will only tolerate being bashed over the head for so long. There is now retaliation going on.
• Cognitive dissonance helps old dogs with their new tricks — Suzanne Cope in Aeon: ‘We learned from the rapidly changing views on gay marriage that direct personal contact with gay family or friends had the greatest impact on challenging views,’ said Judith Beth Cohen, an adult learning expert at Lesley University in Massachusetts. ‘In this case, cognitive dissonance came from the human contact, which made an abstraction come alive. Given that most new media feeds people what they want to hear, we need ways to get beyond our bubbles and encounter the “other”, not just virtually but in the flesh.’

This week, I have been mostly reading:

• No, the “grown-ups” won’t save us: A favorite Beltway fantasy bites the dust again — Heather Digby Parton in Salon: One would have thought Americans had learned their lesson after having lived through the disaster of the George W. Bush years. But 16 years later the Republican Party served up another unqualified, ill-equipped nominee, and he, too, became president without winning the most votes. Once again the establishment tried to reassure the public that he would be held in check by the vice president and the respectable appointees: Gen. Jim Mattis at the Pentagon, Gen. John Kelly at Homeland Security and — after the first choice was fired — Gen. H.R. McMaster as national security adviser. Since the military is the only institution left in America that maintains even the slightest respect among the public, this seemed like a good idea. These men had commanded legions; surely they could control the likes of President Donald Trump.
• Intellectual Property Is Real Money — Dean Baker in Jacobin: The idea of imposing a 20 percent tariff on imported shoes or steel would send any mainstream economist into a frenzy. They all know how tariffs distort the market, leading to waste and corruption. But when it comes to patents and copyrights, the difference we are talking about — between the protected price and the “free market price” — is ten or even a hundred times higher than it would be otherwise.
• Are Students a Class? — Michael Hudson: In view of the fact that a college education is a precondition for joining the working class (except for billionaire dropouts), the middle class is a debtor class – so deep in debt that once they manage to get a job, they have no leeway to go on strike, much less to protest against bad working conditions. This is what Alan Greenspan described as the “traumatized worker effect” of debt. Do students think about their future in these terms? How do they think of their place in the world?
• Monopoly has a Magic Money Tree, just like the real world — Richard Murphy on a point previously made by Stephanie Kelton: Monopoly reflects real life perfectly: the central bank can never run out of money. If it does, it can just create some more.
• #1317; In which an Adult has Fantasies — Wondermark, by David Malki !:
• Slow Crash — Andrew Cockburn interviews Michael Hudson in Harper's: Wall Street’s investment banks and bondholders were rescued, not the economy. The debts were left in place, and continue to grow not only by compound interest but by arrears and penalties compounding. The proportion of national income paid as interest, insurance fees and economic rent is rising faster than the economy is growing. Banks lend mainly to other financial institutions. They don’t lend to factories that are creating jobs. They don’t lend out for goods and services. They lend to other financial institutions. The whole economy has turned into trying to make money on speculation and arbitrage, not on producing goods and services, not on hiring people to actually do work. The economy therefore is very fragile.